I was taken back by your cartoon in today’s paper. After raising a beautiful daughter with autism to adulthood the cartoon was so insensitive. If you had done your research you would know that after much research that a vaccine does not cause autism. I have been a subscriber to the Tampa Bay Times for 50 years and this is the first that a cartoon has upset me.

Thanks for your comment, Claire, and for giving me the chance to explain myself. I’m very sorry to hear that you were upset by my cartoon, that certainly was not my intention. If you’ll look again, I think you’ll see that my cartoon was making the exact point that you did in your comment. Just as there are no such things as Bigfoot, leprechauns, mermaids, and unicorns, there is no such thing as a vaccine that causes autism. Denying that myth was precisely the point of that cartoon.

How do you explain the thousands of parents who watched their children descend into brain damage and what the vaccine injury court describes as ” Autism Like Syndrome”? How do you explain 3.5 billion awarded to victims of vaccine injury? Or thousands of videos of children speaking, walking, growing perfectly normal then regressing immediately post vaccine? How do you explain all that? Big old massive fairy tale or myth right? See… you don’t have to explain it or live it. You just get to use your media platform to ridicule them while fellow humans struggle with a tragedy that is the last acceptable target of hate speech as demonstrated by your cartoon. If you have the balls to mock disabled people then I hope you have the balls to let this comment stand.

My cartoon is in no way meant to mock or ridicule disabled people or children harmed from vaccines. It is only meant to address that which the overwhelming majority of the medical community considers to be a dangerous myth: “vaccines cause autism”. From what I’ve read, while a small percentage of children have experienced serious side effects and disability after vaccines (which is most certainly very tragic) there is not real evidence that vaccines are the cause of the rise in autism. Nor is it safe for large numbers of people to forego vaccines and return to a time when many thousands of children died each year from the diseases that vaccines prevent.

Let me offer a bit on that.
When it comes to Autism, a definite diagnosis is usually not set until 18 months, that is because of the child’s social development.
Now the MMR vaccine is usually given between 12 to 15 months.
Between 12 and 24 months is when the child starts to engage socially with other people. Meaning that is also when parents start to realize that something is wrong.
So the science that links autism with MMR-vaccine is a bit like back in the days with the witch processes. That old hag no one likes pass the house and make a gesture, 15 minutes later granddad keel over by a stroke – only one explanation for that; Witchcraft!

I also find it interesting that Wakefield tried to take out a patent on his own “safer” vaccine, and was also paid a fortune for proving the link from a law firm.

And then, to quote a Médecins Sans Frontières nurse. Anyone against the vaccine should be forced to see a measles epidemic sweep through a refugee camp and then have to dig the little graves.

You seem so sure that vaccines do not cause autism. Have you really done your homework? I am 69 years old, mother of four vaccine-injured children, one with autism, one who died 14 years after his original epileptic reaction, and so I have indeed done my homework. Please rethink what you are ridiculing. Vaccines can and do cause autism, allergies, peanut allergies, auto-immune disorders, asthma – and that’s just the “A’s”!!

A scientific paper published in Feb 2017 demonstrated that autism can be detected in infants as early as 6-12 months old. This shows that wrong conclusions are reached by people who don’t understand the difference between correlation and causation. The more outward signs of autism happened to coincide with the timeframe when children are given their first vaccines. Now, with this latest study, we see that this doesn’t mean one caused the other.
Consider the irresponsibility of the anti-vax movement because it does not consider the amount of lives that would have been lost without the benefit of vaccines. I feel for you and the fact that it’s more challenging to raise children with disabilities, but please take into considerations the ramifications your messages may have on the broader society.
Thank you Dan for making sure this important message is being shared in this new world where key leaders are chosen by how they can manipulate the public’s emotions rather than the rationality of their content.

I used to work in healthcare, one of my clients was the most severe case nationwide. He had no language except for one single sign, the sign for coffee. Not yes or no, just coffee. Violent and self-harming, we were 2 carers 24/7.
He was two years older than you and had never been near an MMR vaccine.
At the same facility, we also had brothers, both also born pre MMR.
And I would say that brothers would indicate there is some genetic connection here.

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